If you use GNOME 3.30 or later, you may find that 'icons on desktop' feature does not exist anymore. You cannot add anything to your personal Desktop folder like you usually did. Fortunately, thanks to csoriano, this removed feature can be added back by installing Desktop Icons extension. You will find this extension useful if you use latest GNOME on Fedora, Arch, openSUSE, and Ubuntu if the Nautilus version is over 3.26. This article shows how it looks from openSUSE Tumbleweed GNOME. Try it and enjoy!

Install the Extension

To install a GNOME Shell Extension, go to the website and click the 'ON' button there. Ubuntu users should be fine with this tutorial. Once installed, you don't need any tweaking, simply try it. If you want to change the icon size, use GNOME Tweaks tool.

(The 'ON' button and GNOME Tweaks showing the configurations)

At A Glance

See, it's like below. You can put either it's program, folder, or any file on desktop. For example, put a folder, Firefox and Image Viewer.

(Icons on desktop in action)

Grid Arrangement

Icons placed on desktop are arranged in grid tidily. You can drag-and-drop icon here.

(Grid arrangement of icons)

How To Play

How to put desired icons on desktop? Copy and paste any folder or file to your personal Desktop folder. For programs, copy the .desktop file from /usr/share/applications to there. Then see your wallpaper. That's it! Unfortunately, for now, you cannot drag-and-drop them directly from Nautilus to desktop. I hope next release of Desktop Icons will have such feature.

(Putting files, including application shortcuts, on Desktop make them icons on desktop)